Professional Documents
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Competence For Functional Safety
Competence For Functional Safety
Abstract
The number of CFSE/CFSP, ISA, TV Rheinland and TV Sd qualified
people around the world has increased rapidly over the past few years.
The question comes up frequently, which is the better qualification?
All are well respected and widely used (to varying degrees), but all of these
qualifications are essentially an indication only of training and knowledge, not of
competence.
IEC 61508 and IEC 61511 require that all personnel working with functional
safety have the competencies appropriate for the activities assigned to them.
The standards do not specify how competence should be defined or assessed.
In the UK the Institution of Engineering and Technology (the IET) published a
detailed guide to functional safety competencies in 1999. The guideline was
revised and reissued in 2007, in conjunction with the HSE UK and the British
Computer Society.
The guideline is well structured, comprehensive and easy to apply. Here in
Australia I&E Systems Pty Ltd has been using the IET competence guidelines
since 2004.
For many years in Australia all vocational education and training has been
based on nationally accepted competency standards. Competency based
assessment has been applied very widely and successfully for at least the past
15 years across all industries, trades and professions but it has not yet been
widely applied to functional safety.
AS/NZS 4761 Competencies for working with electrical equipment in
hazardous areas is a good example of a competency standard that is used
widely and effectively in Australia.
So rather than asking which qualification is better?, the question should be:
How can we make better use of competency based assessment in functional
safety?
INTRODUCTION
1.1
Over the past 40 years we have seen one disaster after another:
Grangemouth 1987
Pasadena 1989
Longford 1998
Buncefield 2005
Montara 2009
Venezuela 2012
Fire after an explosion at the Amuay Oil refinery, Venezuela, August 2012.
(Photo: Reuters)
1.2
Systematic Failures
1.3
Policy
Management System
Responsibilities
Competence
1.4
Competence
CFSE
CFSP
Other training courses are available. For instance IDC Technologies offers a
course covering material similar to the TV Sd CFSP, TV Rheinland FSEng
and ISA SFS courses. Underwriters Laboratories Inc. (UL) offers an
introductory 1 day workshop in functional safety systems development.2
2.1
The requirement for experience is reduced by 3 years for candidates who hold
a bachelor degree in engineering. The requirement for CFSE is further
reduced by 1 year for Licensed Professional Engineers.
As with the CFSE program, CFSP is administered by exida on behalf of the
CFSE Governance Board.
TV Sd also launched its own Functional Safety Certification Program (FSCP)
in 2008.4
2.2
TV Rheinland
2.3
The ISA functional safety certificate program was launched in 2008. Details
can be found through the ISA website at www.isa.org.7
ISA and the Automation Standards Compliance Institute (ASCI) introduce
three certificate programs that are designed to increase knowledge and
awareness of the ISA84 standard.
The ISA84 specialist certificates are awarded to those who successfully
complete a designated training program, prerequisites (for Certificates 2
and 3), and pass a multiple choice exam offered through the Prometric
testing centers
The 3 certificates are:
Certificate 1: ISA84 SIS Fundamentals Specialist (4-day course)
Certificate 2: ISA84 SIL Selection Specialist (2-day course)
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2.4
Comparison
All 3 schools are well respected. The relative merits of the courses and
qualifications have long been a topic of discussion. Each has its advocates.
Both CFSE4 and ISA8 have published comparisons of the various qualifications
though it may be argued that the comparisons are not entirely disinterested.
The differences between the various qualifications are mainly in these areas:
Prescriptive or interpretive
2.5
Popularity
While the original CFSE qualification gained the reputation of being exclusive
and elite, the TV Rheinland FS Engineer program rapidly gained widespread
acceptance. It was targeted at a broader market; being intended to facilitate
understanding and application of the standards rather than to signify
achievement of an elite status.
The number of CFSP and ISA SFS qualified individuals has been increasing
steadily since 2008 but not nearly as rapidly as TV Rheinland FS Engineer.
FS Expert (TV Rheinland) seems to be the most exclusive qualification. It is
essentially limited to individuals who prepare and present their own training
courses.
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2.6
Global Acceptance
11
COMPETENCE VS TRAINING
12
Ability to interpret relevance and confidence levels for failure rate data
13
3.1
3.1.1 History
Competency based assessment (CBA) was first developed in the USA in the
1980s.10 The ideas were adopted and developed in the UK11 and in Australia12
over the next 2 decades.
Government policy and funding in the UK and Australia led to its widespread
adoption while until recently CBA was largely ignored in the USA.11
By 2000 CBA was widely established in Australia, providing the basis for all
vocational training across all industries, trades and professions.13
There has been a growing interest in the application of competency
assessment for engineering education in the USA. In 1996 ABET, a nongovernment accrediting agency for US engineering programs developed
Engineering Criteria 2000 (EC2000), a competency based framework.14,15
3.1.2 Difficulties
The implementation of CBA has not been without difficulties.16
In early applications users struggled with how to develop objective competence
standards that provide an accurate and useful benchmark of the abilities
required for a job. It has often been difficult to write performance criteria that
are specific, objective and unambiguous. Application of a standard should not
depend too heavily on the assessors personal judgement.
Another important issue that had to be resolved was how to grade the level of
competency achieved. Some grading is needed to recognise that some
individuals achieve higher levels of performance than others.
From the very beginnings of CBA, Dreyfus and Dreyfus10 proposed that
competence should be graded at a number of levels:
1. Novice: Rule-based behaviour, strongly limited and inflexible
2. Competent: Incorporates aspects of the situation
3. Proficient: Acting consciously from long-term goals and plans
4. Expertise: Sees the situation as a whole, intuitively appropriate action
from personal conviction
5. Mastery: Unconscious and intuitive understanding without having to rely
on principles
Most Australian national competence standards now provide several grades of
achievement. Australian vocational education standards typically include
Certificate III, Certificate IV and Diploma levels.
Some of the standards have been well written and have remained essentially
unchanged for decades. Others have been subject to frequent revisions.
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Acceptance has been good where there is a consensus among users that a
standard provides a fair and accurate reflection of the requirements for a job.
To be successful CBA standards must also be easy to understand and easy to
apply.
3.1.3 Examples
In Australia, aside from vocational training, there are several good examples of
competence standards that are very well established and successful:
3.2
Competency Principles
Technical skills
Behavioural skills
Underlying knowledge
Underlying understanding
Detailed Performance Criteria are described for each element and for each
level (or grade) of achievement. The criteria describe the type of evidence that
would demonstrate that a candidate has achieved the defined level of
competence.
The usefulness (and success) of a CBA standard depends on the structure of
the units and elements being complete, comprehensive and logical, and on the
performance criteria being objective and easy to interpret.
3.3
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4.1
4.2
4.3
Competence Unit
CFM
HF
HRA
ISA
PSM
SAD
SHR
SRM
SRP
SRS
SSR
SV
These units correlate closely with the requirements of IEC 61508 and IEC
61511. All of the detailed requirements of the standards are covered
including those that cannot be or have not been addressed by training courses.
For example management and leadership competencies are defined clearly
and in detail.
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4.4
Each unit is divided into elements covering Tasks and Attributes that identify
the necessary technical and behavioural skills and the underpinning knowledge
and understanding.
The example below shows elements that comprise the unit on software
realisation:
SSR
Tasks
SSR1
SSR2
SSR3
SSR4
SSR5
SSR6
SSR7
Attributes
SSR8
SSR9
SSR10
SSR11
4.5
Supervised Practitioner
Practitioner
Expert
4.5.2 Practitioner
A practitioner has sufficient knowledge and understanding of good
practice, and sufficient demonstrated experience, to be able to work on
tasks without the need for detailed supervision. A practitioner will
maintain their knowledge and be aware of the current developments in
the context in which they work.
4.5.3 Expert
An expert will have a sufficient understanding of why things are done in
certain ways, and sufficient demonstrated managerial skills, to be able to
undertake overall responsibility for the performance of a task or function.
An expert will be familiar with the ways in which systems, and previous
safety management systems, have failed in the past.
An expert will keep abreast of technologies, architectures, application
solutions, standards, and regulatory requirements, particularly in rapidly
evolving fields such as programmable safety-related systems. An expert
will have sufficient breadth of experience, knowledge and deep
understanding to be able to work in novel situations. An expert is able to
deal with a multiplicity of problems under pressure without jeopardising
safety issues.
4.6
Each element has detailed competence criteria defined for each of the different
levels.
The following example is taken from the unit Project Safety Assurance
Management. The first element of the unit is PSM1, Defining the scope of the
project. The task is described as:
Seeks out and evaluates information in order to define the scope,
objectives, context and safety-significance of a safety-related project.
The performance criterion for a Supervised Practitioner is:
Can identify the main categories of information required to define the
scope, context and safety significance of a safety related project and
describe how this information is obtained and evaluated.
The Practitioner and Expert share the same performance criterion:
Can illustrate, through design documents, working notes, minutes of
meetings etc., how information has been collected to define the scope,
context and safety significance of safety-related projects carried out
within the organisation or relevant industry sector.
4.7
HSE Guidelines
In 2007 the Health and Safety Executive, UK, the IET and the British Computer
Society published guidelines on Managing competence for safety-related
18
I&E Systems Pty Ltd (IES) is an engineering consultancy that specialises in the
design, implementation and integration and safeguarding systems for process
industries.
In 2004 IES adopted a competency management system based on the IET
competence criteria.
5.1
Normal Can work without direct supervision under broad guidance only. May
supervise others and may take responsibility for the work of others.
Applies abilities independently for both routine and non-routine work.
Exercises judgement in planning own work and selecting appropriate
equipment, services and techniques.
Senior
Lead
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5.2
Example assessment
20
5.3
Evidence
The assessor has a reasonable degree of latitude regarding what evidence can
be accepted to justify a claim of competence.
The rules of evidence in competency assessment are:
Valid: The evidence must be relevant and related to the criteria and
relevant to the application domain and technology in question
Fair: The assessor must not discriminate unfairly; the assessment must
not be too onerous or too pedantic.
5.4
IES maps all of the activities on each project to units and/or elements of
competence.
During project planning the project manager confirms that personnel have the
appropriate competence for the activities for which they will be made
accountable.
Supervisors are assigned to personnel who have sufficient competence to carry
out activities under supervision. Supervised personnel are not authorised to
sign deliverables as approved.
The following chart shows an example of a competency map for a particular
project.
21
22
SUMMARY
6.1
Clear expectations
Competence
6.2
Competence
6.3
6.4
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References
1
Angel Casal. 2011, SIS Pitfalls, Major Accidents and Lessons Learned, paper presented at
the IDC Technologies Safety Control & Instrumentation Systems Conference, Perth, 20th
September 2011.
2
Underwriters Laboratories Inc., IEC 61508 Introductory Functional Safety Training, viewed
15th November 2012,
<http://www.ul.com/global/eng/pages/offerings/industries/powerandcontrols/functional/>
3
CFSE Governance Board, Certified Functional Safety Expert / Professional Program, viewed
15th November 2012,
<http://www.cfse.org/index.php/Information/About/>.
4
Personnel Functional Safety Certification: Not All Programs Are Created Equal, a whitepaper
commissioned by the CFSE Governance Board, 2010, viewed 15th November 2012, p5,
<http://www.cfse.org/images/uploads/Personnel%20Functional%20Safety%20Certification%20
Programs.pdf>.
5
ISA84 Safety Instrumented Systems Certificate Programs, viewed 15th November 2012,
<http://www.isa.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Products_and_Services/Certification3/Certificate_
Programs/Certificate_Programs.htm>
8
ISAs SIS Certificate Programs vs. Other Safety Recognition Programs, reference chart,
viewed 15th November 2012,
<http://www.isa.org/filestore/certification/SIS%20program%20chart.pdf>
9
Dreyfus, Stuart E.; Dreyfus, Hubert L. (February 1980). A Five-Stage Model of the Mental
Activities Involved in Directed Skill Acquisition. Washington, DC: Storming Media (referenced
in Wikipedia).
<http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA084551&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf>
11
Lattuca L.R., Terenzini, P.T., and Volkwein, J.F. 2006, Engineering Change, A Study of the
Impact of EC2000, study report published by ABET Inc., Baltimore.
<http://www.abet.org/engineering-change/>
16
Garavan, T. & McGuire, D. 2001, Competencies & Workplace Learning: Some Reflections
on the Rhetoric & the Reality, Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 13, No. 4, p. 144 - 164.
<http://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/278/>
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17
TAA04 - Training and Assessment Training Package, April 2008, Industry Skills Council,
viewed 20th November 2012,
<http://training.gov.au/Training/Details/TAA04>
19
The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2007, Competence Criteria for Safety-related
System Practitioners, Product Code: PMPA023X
<http://www.theiet.org/resources/books/policy/comp-crit.cfm>
21
The Health and Safety Executive, UK, 2007, Managing competence for safety-related
systems, Part 1: Key guidance and Part 2: Supplementary material
<http://www.hse.gov.uk/humanfactors/topics/mancomppt1.pdf> and
<http://www.hse.gov.uk/humanfactors/topics/mancomppt2.pdf>
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